Cite as: 505 U. S. 557 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
it) depends principally upon its particular merits. Contingency enhancement calculated on any class-wide basis, therefore, guarantees at best (leaving aside the double-counting problem described earlier) that those cases within the class that have the class-average chance of success will be compensated according to what the "market" requires to produce the services, and that all cases having above-class-average chance of success will be overcompensated.
Looking beyond the Delaware Valley II concurrence's approach, we perceive no other basis, fairly derivable from the fee-shifting statutes, by which contingency enhancement, if adopted, could be restricted to fewer than all contingent-fee cases. And we see a number of reasons for concluding that no contingency enhancement whatever is compatible with the fee-shifting statutes at issue. First, just as the statutory language limiting fees to prevailing (or substantially prevailing) parties bars a prevailing plaintiff from recovering fees relating to claims on which he lost, Hensley v. Ecker-hart, 461 U. S. 424 (1983), so should it bar a prevailing plaintiff from recovering for the risk of loss. See Delaware Valley II, supra, at 719-720, 724-725 (principal opinion). An attorney operating on a contingency-fee basis pools the risks presented by his various cases: cases that turn out to be successful pay for the time he gambled on those that did not. To award a contingency enhancement under a fee-shifting statute would in effect pay for the attorney's time (or anticipated time) in cases where his client does not prevail.
Second, both before and since Delaware Valley II, "we have generally turned away from the contingent-fee model"—which would make the fee award a percentage of the value of the relief awarded in the primary action*—"to
*Contrary to Justice Blackmun's understanding, post, at 572, there is no reason in theory why the contingent-fee model could not apply to relief other than damages; where injunctive relief is obtained, for example, the fee award would simply be a percentage of the value of the injunctive relief. There would be, to be sure, severe problems of administration in
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